The Sweeper: Is Paid Content the Future of American Soccer Journalism?

Big StoryA couple of months ago, we discussed the ongoing problem of the lack of coverage of MLS in American sports journalism, a problem only likely to get worse as print media digs its own grave (this was prompted by Richard Whittall’s excellent discussion of the crisis).

Many MLS teams remain without a dedicated journalist at their local newspaper, and in this media climate, they are not likely to be hiring one soon. Our solution, albeit a very unsatisfactory one from the standpoint of independent journalism, was that teams (as is happening in other sports) might hire journalists to cover their own team.

The idea is to have dedicated coverage for each Major League Soccer team. This is an area that has historically been underserved (at best) or completely ignored (at worst) by local newspapers. And yet the demand for news is certainly there. Just take the Philadelphia Union, the newest MLS team to begin play next season. The team has already sold 6,000 season tickets (as of six months ago!) yet does not have a single dedicated beat reporter from a major newspaper or wire service. That’s at least 6,000 individuals who are left wanting for news about their team.

ASN concludes that this would best be started at a single team, with a $200,000 start-up cost for staff and expenses, which could be funded by a monthly fee of $5-10 range by around “3,000 subscriptions”, commenting ”That’s significantly less than the amount of people who put down season ticket deposits for the Philadelphia Union.”

It’s interesting, now we see the likes of Rupert Murdoch also threatening paywalls around content, to consider the recent recollections of a paywall pioneer, Salon.com managing editor Scott Rosenberg, writing in the Guardian this week. Salon went to a paid model way back in 2001, and he concludes that “As for the question of how “niche” you need to be for a paywall to work – I think it’s pretty simple economics: if you have a product that is scarce, you can charge for it more easily. Specialised information, information that people need to earn their livings and can’t get elsewhere, and so on. If there are free alternatives, you are not going to get very far, even with an edge in quality. You can also make it work if you have a relatively low cost structure and a very loyal set of readers who have some commitment to your product as a cause.”

It’s possible ASN’s model for American soccer matches this, given the scarcity of serious content on each MLS team and small but fanatic followings in certain cities, though somebody’s going to need to pony up a couple of hundred thousand dollars to find out.

As for the question of how “niche” you need to be for a paywall to work – I think it’s pretty simple economics: if you have a product that is scarce, you can charge for it more easily. Specialised information, information that people need to earn their livings and can’t get elsewhere, and so on. If there are free alternatives, you are not going to get very far, even with an edge in quality.

You can also make it work if you have a relatively low cost structure and a very loyal set of readers who have some commitment to your product as a cause.

Worldwide News

Red Bull New York are gambling on a European with no experience of Major League Soccer to revive their fortunes in the most important year in the club’s history, as they move into a new stadium. Erik Solér has officially taken over as the Red Bulls Sporting Director and General Manager: he will be running the club on and off the field. It’s hard enough to get to grips with MLS as a foreigner, given its unique place in American sports culture and its byzantine rules, even harder in a place where failure has become the tradition. While the fact the only way is up will help Solér, along with the excitement of a new stadium, the wisdom of such a choice has to be questioned.

In the ongoing crisis in America’s lower league that we again discussed yesterday with regard to the USSF’s intervention, other option for the nascent revived NASL would be for the Canadian Soccer Association to act as the sole sanctioning body. The 24th minute has the scoop on this prospect, but it has to be said the CSA has hardly garnered a great reputation for developing the sport in North America, and this would surely be a last ditch option should the USSF fail to successfully mediate their dispute with the USL.

When soccer gets featured in a quasi-academic American journal of foreign affairs, you can be pretty sure it’s not going to be a fairytale story. And so Foreign Policy looks at the vicious fall-out from the Algeria-Egypt World Cup qualifying battle, concluding that “any vestiges of pan-Arab fellow-feeling are in shreds today, and underlying political issues have come to the fore as the soccer fight grows more personal.” Though this is a pretty well-informed piece, it’s fairly easy to exaggerate the media and public rhetoric that surrounds these games and turn it into another “soccer war” story.

10 Responses to "The Sweeper: Is Paid Content the Future of American Soccer Journalism?"

I find the newspaper thing kind of interesting. Charlotte has a USL-2, and a W-League team (and a host of college teams, being in North Carolina where college sports are bigger than pro sports). The Eagles, at the moment, play in a 1,100-seat High School stadium in South Charlotte.

The local paper, the Observer, staffs not one, but two soccer reporters. It’s always been weird to me that some bigger cities don’t have one.

There was an excellent presentation yesterday by Jeff Jarvis at the Search Engine Strategies Conference in Chicago where he discussed Murdoch’s pay wall idea and, through research, shows that pay walls punish your most loyal customers — which has the opposite effect of what Murdoch wants to do.

The paid content model is a viable alternative, but as the next generation (even more wired than this) grows up with Google and does not remember reading the NYTimes Sunday edition from paper cover to cover, the fallout from search engine companies may be the crowning blow for some creaky old newspapers. Right now the papers alleged that search engines steal their content, yet they don’t complain about no longer paying newspaper boys or publishers.

I’m wondering if FC Dallas’s situation is unique, and if it’s able to be duplicated. Buzz Carrick’s 3rddegree.net is a model of high-end amateur web presence, with free, insightful reporting. I can honestly say I don’t miss beat reporters. Surely other, better-supported teams should be able to find people able to come close without raising the specter of a paywall.

One of the current models you can examine is the financial information sector. Plenty of free financial data exists on Yahoo Finance, StockCharts.com, and the business pages of most major newspapers. However, a core set of retail investors (“average Joes”) pay the $115/year subscription fee to access sites like Morningstar that provide more in-depth analysis and a higher level of business/financial coverage.

So, as would be expected, there is a large market for free “undigested” data. But there is also a smaller, yet sustainable, market of customers who are willing to pay $10/month for a higher level of analysis.

Of course, people are generally more willing to pay when they believe the service will bolster their savings. To what extent the financial model translates to MLS remains to be seen.

Buzz is unique, and does a great job with the 3rd Degree; the problem is, that despite the high-end look of his site and the amount of team-focused content he produces, he still doesn’t pull down much (I don’t believe). Fortunately for FCD fans, Buzz’s “day job” allows him the access and freedom to gather and report; but what if there is no “Buzz” in other cities (which there does not appear to be)? What if Buzz changes jobs and can’t devote the time to go out to training, talk to players, dig for scoops, etc.?

The issue will continue to be a problem because rarely does someone of Buzz’s abilities and access come along to do the job from an amateur footing. Part of the problem I see with the free content as provided by volunteer “journalists” is that there is no real standard; for every Buzz, a trained journalist covering a team in his spare time and doing it well, there are fifty less-than-qualified bloggers/citizen reporters spitting out information lacking in professionalism. Maybe that won’t be a problem in fifty years when Americans have simply accepted the lower quality of writing and reporting because all of the journalists have disappeared, but it’s a major problem, at least for me, right now.

A Ruiz, from personal experience, I can guarantee you that Ives makes most of his living off the freelance gigs instead of ad revenue from the traffic. Ad CPM rates are pretty low these days unfortunately and even with all of the traffic he gets, it probably doesn’t add up to as much as you would think.

The Crew finally have there own beat reporter Shawn Mitchell(columbus Distpatch), who blogs and has a website Crewextra that is tied in with 10TV ONN(ohio news network) and some of the free papers.
I know that he first had his blog and before they had the full blown website and he was getting alot of hits for his blog and the rumour is that it was one of the highest for the newspaper, and people were pretty shocked by it, this is an OSU town, go to there website and it OSU sports and Other sports. I do think that the paper does own a small part of the crew.

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